27 March 2012

The Plot to Get Rush ... And Every Other Conservative Talker

A quite specific, quite detailed plot to get Rush
Limbaugh, ruin his career, and drive him off the air.

Next targets? Sean Hannity and former Alaska Governor
Sarah Palin.

Lots to cover here.

Let's start with Mr. Angelo Carusone.

Who is Angelo Carusone? Today he is now the "Director of
Online Strategy for Media Matters for America."

But a few years back? He was just your basic left-wing law
student with a standard left-wing passion. That passion?
Totalitarian-style censorship.

Let's stop here for a moment for a brief bit of historical
background -- not a detour but a very necessary context.

It is a big mistake -- a really big mistake -- to dismiss
what's being done to Rush Limbaugh as just some crazy guys at Media
Matters.

When we work our way through what Angelo Carusone and his
Media Matters comrades and others are doing when they target Rush,
or went after Glenn Beck, or plan to do in targeting Sean Hannity
and Sarah Palin and who knows who after that (Levin?
Laura?) remember: this is the way the Left -- the global left
throughout history, not simply the American Left today -- has
always behaved. A fanatical intolerance is part of the
leftist DNA.

The late Austrian free-market economist Ludwig von Mises
described the leftist method of operation as "fanatical and
intolerant." It works, he said, this way:

Socialism… works on the emotions…to stifle the voice of reason
by awakening primitive instincts.

Primitive instincts.

And that most primitive of human instincts? You got
it.

Fear.

The skillful, clever use of fear (not to mention hate) is
the defining trait of leftists throughout history. Fear is the
primitive emotion the left feeds on like a junkie needs drugs. It
is a trait repeatedly manifested in history by the use of
intimidation or bully-boy tactics to assert raw power.It is the vividly identifiable scarlet thread of intolerance
that has shown itself in one leftist movement after another on down
through the centuries, regardless of nationality.

Leftist French Revolutionaries launched the "Reign of
Terror," dragging terrified opponents to the guillotine. The moment
Lenin's triumphant Communists overwhelmed Russia, notes The
Black Book of Communism, the triumphant left
"institutionalized the notion of 'enemy of the people.'" People so
identified were to be "arrested immediately," charged with "crimes"
like "abuse of one's position" -- essentially the American left's
charge right now about Rush Limbaugh. In short order, millions of
Soviet citizens in the new order were shot outright when not sent
to the Gulag. In the 1930s the newly powerful National Socialists
of Germany -- aka the Nazis -- began sending storm troopers to
terrify Jews by painting crude yellow signs reading "Not for
Aryans" on the windows of Jewish shopkeepers. Eventually, Jews were
forced to wear a yellow patch in the shape of the Star of David,
bearing a single word Jude -- Jew. In Mao's China, this
leftist fanaticism appeared as the "Cultural Revolution," which
targeted all manner of dissenters with both psychological
intimidation as well as physical violence. One of the favorite
weapons of Mao's Red Guards was "Chinese Roulette." The game? A
group of dissenters would be rounded up and delivered to a firing
squad -- but at the last minute only a random few would be pulled
from the group and shot. The rest who had survived were said to
have suffered something worse than death: a "bullet" of fear and
repression inside the brain.

In America, the leftists beneath the hoods of the Ku Klux
Klan lynched terrified blacks at night while running America's
Democratic Party by day. No less than future president Ronald
Reagan was threatened with having acid tossed in his face if he
didn't cease fighting the infiltration of Communists in
Hollywood. Today SEIU thugs are captured on
video beating up those who dissent on Obamacare, calling
their victim the "n--word".

Fear. Intimidation. Bullying. Racism. Hatred of the
"other." Without these tactics, the left is naked in the war of
ideas. By coincidence, R. Emmett Tyrrell, the founder and
editor-in-chief of The American Spectator has a book
coming out in May titled The Death of Liberalism.

There could in fact be no better sign of that death than
the behavior of the left -- the typical behavior -- as evidenced in
this entire episode. The Happy Warrior "politics of joy" of that
cheerful liberal's liberal Hubert Humphrey is long, long
gone.

So.

You thought the business of getting Rush Limbaugh off the
air was because of a bad word choice about Sandra Fluke?

Think again.

The starting date for this latest in a long line of
fear-inducing leftists --was, according to Angelo Carusone himself,
"late 2009 and early 2010."

Got that?

In other words, a full two-plus years before Sandra Fluke
ever appeared on the anti-religious liberty scene, Commissar
Carusone (what other title is more fitting for a self-styled free
speech monitor?) was hatching the plot to "Stop Rush." In the world
of Internet domains, Carusone even had it registered as "Stop
Rush.org."

Take a gander here at Legal Insurrection, here at the Blaze, and
here at the Village Voice to
see how Carusone quite candidly goes about his self-appointed task
as one of the revolutionary guards in the American Left's Political
Police.

How does Carusone's storm trooper game work?

What does Media Matters do?

Remember. Angelo Carusone was going after Glenn Beck
several years ago as a free-lancing leftist law student. His
activities caught the attention of Media Matters, where Commissar
Carusone is now officially ensconced as the group's "Director of
Online Strategy."

Let's carefully comb through the record of Mr. Carusone in
these various stories -- plus this Carusone interview here
at a site called Raw Story. In which, on June 2, 2010,
distinctly unknown in the national media at the time, the then-law
student describes in detail what he is up to.

And let's add something else into this mix. Commissar
Carusone, as noted, is now officially a direct employee of Media
Matters. Recently the Daily Caller did a
highly illuminating series on Media Matters. A series that revealed
an out-of-control leftist machine filled with gazillions of leftist
Big Money, headed by a man described as exhibiting "volatile and
erratic" behavior who "struggles with mental illness" while
parading around with the security entourage worthy "of a Third
World dictator."

So let's add 2 plus 2 and see what 4 equals, shall
we?

We will carefully list the tactics admitted to by
Commissar Carusone himself. And add what the Daily
Caller has reported about Media Matters. Remembering
that the Commissar now works for Media
Matters.

Here we go.

• Disrupt relationships with
sponsors: Not unlike "Chinese Roulette," the object
is to put a bullet of fear in the minds of the target's
advertisers. Or, as a Chinese official was quoted in the
Economist only last January in a story with a
section titled "Chinese Roulette," give people (advertisers in the
case of Rush) the sense they are "playing pass the parcel with a
time bomb."

This was what Commissar Carusone did with Glenn Beck's
advertisers. Now the target is Rush Limbaugh, with Carusone openly
admitting he has talk radio host and Fox star Hannity and Fox
commentator Palin in his sights.

So how, according to Commissar Carusone himself, does he
go about his self-assigned task of putting that bullet of fear in
the minds of advertisers? How precisely did he terrorize Rush
Limbaugh's advertisers into believing they were "playing pass the
parcel with a time bomb" -- and they, the advertisers in question,
were about to lose?

First, the Commissar listens to a "supersized"
batch of his target's broadcasts.

Then he selects something that offends him in
broadcast X.

Next the Commissar "dispatches a letter or
e-mail to corporate executives asking them if they are aware that
their ads are running in an hour" when Beck or (fill in the
blank…Rush, Hannity, Palin) said Y. "Y" standing for "insert newest
offensive sound bite"…which is to say, words offensive to
left-winger Carusone.

When did this happen in the Rush episode? When exactly did
Carusone aim his weapon at the heads of advertisers and pull the
trigger? When precisely did the latest leftist out to intimidate
shoot his bullet of fear? Remember: Rush never said a word about
Sandra Fluke until a Wednesday. Says Commissar Carusone in his
Village Voice interview:

"I started talking to advertisers on Thursday, and got a lot of
feedback on Friday, and I knew a lot of movement was taking place.
This was important to think about from a business perspective."

Get it? The very nextday -- Thursday
-- the Commissar was at work instilling fear into Rush's
sponsors. Result?

One of the advertisers on the receiving end of this kind
of garbage was businessman Mark Stevens. As seen in this interview yesterday with Fox's Megyn Kelly -- and
make a point of listening to it if you can -- Stevens had the guts
to say he was the target of what he called "internal American
terrorism" because he refused to drop his local ads that appear on
the Limbaugh show in the New York market. Stevens pulled no
punches. He understood exactly what was happening to him and had
the guts to stand up to the bullies. And while he wouldn't say who
was doing it -- he clearly knows. So too does Rush –--who cites
Media Matters by name. So do we all.

And by the way, Stevens recognized exactly that what was
happening to him and the people in his company -- one woman in
particular -- was nothing less than an attempt to "invoke fear." In
other words, Chinese Roulette had come to America. And Mark Stevens
was being told he had to live with the bullet of fear in his head
everyday -- and Mark Stevens boldly refused.

But not every advertiser has Mark Stevens' courage --
something Commissar Carusone understands full well.

Says the Raw Story article of Carusone's tactics:
"Many times, that [is] enough to make advertisers pull their
commercials, although Carusone admits that by now his reputation
for peskiness may help grease the wheels." Thus… seven sponsors
departed the Limbaugh show.

But not Mark Stevens.

•Methodically Catalogue Results of
Smear and Fear
Campaign:Next
step? After having sprayed an AK-47's worth of bullets of fear at
Rush's advertisers?

Commissar Carusone, Raw Story reports, then
"catalogues his activities… which includes one running list of
sponsors that have dropped the show and another of those that have
not."

Stop right here.

This is the 21st century Americanization of a very old
leftist tactic. It is described thusly in The Black Book of
Communism, revealing how Stalin's "State Political
Directorate" Commissars kept precise lists of exactly who among
"enemy" social classes had been arrested, deported, or shot. Or,
ominously, who needed to be. Say the authors of the
procedure:

The mania for planning and maintaining statistics… was also an
important weapon in the arsenal of terror.

This was exactly the Carusone procedure created for
dealing with Glenn Beck.

This of course is, what causes Commissar Carusone to say
of Rush's view of Fluke that Rush spoke "almost 50 smears for three
days" about Fluke. Count 'em. Not 49 "smears". Not 51 "smears."
Precisely 50. With not a soul asking: "Who gets to determine what
is a smear?"

Answer: Why, Commissar Carusone, of course.

This is straight from the playbook of Stalin's "State
Political Directorate." One of the oldest tricks in the leftist
playbook is given new life in 21st century online America. Using a
site, found here,
that Carusone says was "started… in 2009, 2010."

So if we go to StopRush.org, like clockwork in the
evolution of leftist political police, we find what was described
in that June 2010 interview. There it is, the "running list of
sponsors that have dropped the show and another of those that have
not." Indeed, at the very top of the site are sections labeled
"Dropped
Sponsors" and "Remaining
Sponsors."

At the moment, the "Dropped Sponsors" list contains a mere
12, not the over 100 sponsors, as the pliant mainstream
media would have you believe after being spoon fed by -- wonder of
wonders -- Media Matters. The repeated and grossly inaccurate
stories of advertisers fleeing the show a complete -- deliberate --
misrepresentation of how sponsorship in radio works. Seven of the
twelve listed on StopRush.org were in fact national Rush sponsors,
announced long ago in the first wave of leftist-engineered reaction
to Rush's Fluke words. The "remaining sponsors" list is
mysteriously empty -- because, says the site, of an update promised
for….March 5. Weeks ago.

It makes no mention that Sleep Train, Rush's longtime
sponsor, frantically realized -- too late -- that it had been
conned and, after a barrage from Rally for Rush fans, sought to
come back as a sponsor. An offer Rush refused.

But on the StopRush.org site's home page?

Here we find "Sponsor Updates" -- and it is here that one
listing in particular illustrates the totalitarian mindset at work
with Carusone and his leftist comrades.

Notice the company listed as "Brighter.com"?
Brighter.com is an American entrepreneurial venture designed to
provide dental care. It was never a national Rush sponsor à
la Sleep Train. But how is it portrayed at
StopRush.org?

First, here's this interesting graph posted at
StopRush.org:

In a statement emailed to Media Matters, Brighter.com indicated
ads on Rush Limbaugh were placed in error and they would take steps
to ensure such ads do not air again in the future.

Catch the reference? "In a statement emailed to Media
Matters….." And who, now, is Media Matters?

A spokesperson for Brighter.com contacted Media Matters and
advised that this Brighter.com ad ran as a result of "inventory
being placed indiscriminately by a media buying agency," stressed
that Brighter.com did not deliberately advertise on this program,
and confirmed that Brighter.com has "taken steps to assure this
does not happen in the future." Media Matters will continue to
monitor.

Catch that last sentence? "Media Matters will
continue to monitor."

There, right there, is "Chinese Roulette" at work. The
bullet of fear placed in the minds of Brighter.com's executives
that their free market business in making dental care affordable is
now on the bully's watch list.

If this were Germany in the early 1930s, the message to
Brighter.com is the equivalent of the yellow paint on Jewish shop
windows warning "Not for Aryans." It is the Media Matters
equivalent of marking someone with that chilling "enemy of the
people" stain, resulting in a listing with the State Political
Directorate, the list carefully maintained by a Stalin
Commissar.

Right there on the home page of StopRush.org is the
descendant of the blunt threat of a lynching, once used by all
those progressives under Klan hoods to threaten black Americans
(when said progressives took time out from running Democratic Party
conventions like thisone). Right there on the home page of StopRush.org
is the mind set of the "progressives" like those Black Panthers
seen here
outside a 2008 Philadelphia polling place, one menacingly wielding
a nightstick -- following exactly in the steps of the progressive
Klan. This is the modern equivalent of the low voice on the phone
threatening to throw acid in actor Reagan's face.Let's continue.

• Propagandize the
media:Says Commissar
Carusone's simpatico "interviewer" in the Village
Voice:

"Let me ask you about this: Sandra Fluke was a white, middle
class woman. She was a law student…."

Sandra Fluke was much more than that. She was, in point of
fact, a "white, middle class woman…law student" -- who was also a
considerable leftist activist. Here
is her record, as recorded over here and as listed at her
respective undergraduate and graduate universities, Cornell and
Georgetown Law respectively:

At Cornell, where she graduated with a B.S. in Policy
Analysis & Management; Feminist, Gender & Sexuality
Studies, Sandra Fluke is listed as a participant
in:

Students Acting for Gender
Equality

Take Back
the Night

Sexual
Assault and Violence Indicators

The Vagina Monologues/V-Day College
Campaign

Cornell
Women's Resource Center Volunteer

Cornell University Student Assembly Committee
on Women's Issues

Women in Public Policy

At Georgetown, Sandra Fluke is listed as a participant
in:

Women's Legal
Alliance

Law
Students for Reproductive Justice

GULC Anti-Human Trafficking Joint
Committee

Georgetown Human Rights Action

Amnesty
International

Innocence Project

Phi Alpha Delta

Georgetown Democrats

National Lawyers Guild

This is the record of an innocent college
student?

Of course not. This is the record of a more-than-budding
left-wing activist, a feminized version of Angelo Carusone. A
Commissarette in training.

So the obvious question. How many news stories were
pitched by Fluke's left-wing handlers that both resulted in this
public portrait of a demure, guileless school girl? Who pitched

them? And who swallowed them?

• Use the Social Media:Who
needs a firing squad to play Chinese Roulette when you have
Twitter?

In that 2010 interview, Carusone was said to have "more
than 7,000 followers on Twitter."

So when the national media obligingly spins the yarn of
Rush versus Innocent College Girl… Commissar Carusone, now
amplified by the millions of dollars in leftist Media Matters money
and machinery, had but to tweet and… BANG!

See for yourself right here what is
being tweeted from the Commissar to his left-wing legions. This is
doubtless only one arena in which, ironically, free speech for some
is being used in a plot to deprive others of the same right. Under
the guise of attacking corporations and companies -- as if
corporations and companies and the people who work in them are not
entitled to their own free speech rights, and the right not to fear
intimidation for selling soap or clean teeth.

Startled Rush sponsors were instantly receiving a
seemingly self-starting barrage of angry anti-Rush tweets, e-mails,
calls and snail mail -- many from people who were never customers
in the first place. Without a clue that sponsors were -- and
are -- on the receiving end of a quite well-tailored leftist tech
campaign to frighten them into obeying the will of the Commissar
and the free speech Political Police.

• The White House and its tie to
Media Matters and Sandra Fluke:What's the difference between the Angelo Carusone the lone
leftist law student of yesteryear -- and the Commissar Angelo
Carusone of today?

Right. The Commissar works for Media Matters. The very
same Media Matters identified in detail by the Daily
Caller as having "close coordination with White House
and news organizations."

Say again, close coordination with the White
House.

And what was one of the notable aspects of the Rush-Sandra
Fluke episode? Yes, indeed.

The President of the United States himself picked up the
phone and made a highly publicized call to… Sandra
Fluke.

And who has Bill O'Reilly reported as representing Sandra
Fluke? Yes indeed. That would be ex-Obama White House
Communications Director Anita Dunn. And what did the Daily
Caller reveal in that story linked above?
This:

A group with the ability to shape news coverage is of
incalculable value to the politicians it supports, so it's no
surprise that Media Matters has been in regular contact with
political operatives in the Obama administration. According to
visitor logs, on June 16, 2010, Brock and then-Media Matters
president Eric Burns traveled to the White House for a meeting with
Valerie Jarrett, arguably the president's closest adviser. Recently
departed Obama communications director Anita Dunn returned to the
White House for the meeting as well.

It's not clear what the four spoke about -- no one in the
meeting returned repeated calls for comment -- but the apparent
coordination continued. "Anita Dunn became a regular presence at
the office," says someone who worked there. Then-president of Media
Matters, Eric Burns, "lunched with her, met with her and chatted
with her frequently on any number of matters."

In other words: The White House coordinates with Media
Matters. Anita Dunn, now departed from the Obama White House,
returns for meetings with the Obama White House staff and Media
Matters, and is a "regular presence" at the offices of Media
Matters. And -- shocker -- it is Anita Dunn who now represents
Sandra Fluke. Who is being used by Commissar Carusone and his Media
Matters comrades as the reason to launch yet another attack on free
speech. Not theirs, of course. Heaven forbid. Just those who are,
shall we say, considered to be "enemies of the people" and all of
that.

Doubtless you've seen this
gem. Secret donors putting up $100,000 for Media Matters to run ads
in eight cities, asking for Rush to be removed from the airwaves.
In other words, a bounty of $100,000 grand to end Rush's career.
Here's the storyas it first appeared in the Washington
Times. Fox's Bill O'Reilly has correctly slammed the campaign as being "very fascist." Mr.
O'Reilly is right, and he would know, being a longtime target of
Media Matters himself.

But did you notice the source for the Media Matters story
that appeared in the Washington Times? Here's two key
paragraphs:

Ad time was purchased in Boston; Chicago; Detroit; Seattle;
Milwaukee; St. Louis; Macon, Ga.; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The
cities were selected to support active local campaigns against
Limbaugh or because of perceptions Limbaugh may be vulnerable in
that market, said Angelo Carusone of Media Matters.
"What we're really looking for is a way to demonstrate the
persistence of the effort and the fact that it is on a wide scale,"
Carusone said.

And there he is. Commissar Carusone speaks.

Now…there's more. Much more.

But let's summarize what we have here.

• The Left's Dependence on Fear and
Intimidation:

The left has centuries ago trademarked
themselves as history's thugs, the grim, intolerant people with the
brass knuckles and more if you get out of line and dare to speak
your mind. From the guillotine of 1789 to the lists of enemies of
the people in the 1920s to Chinese Roulette in the 1960s. In
America it has run the gamut from the lynching of blacks to
union thuggery to intimidating sponsors of talk radio in the
twittering 21st century. It's all to the same purpose.

•Disrupt Relationships With
Sponsors:

A serious campaign has been
underway to disrupt Rush's relationships with his sponsors. An
effort launched two years -- two years -- before Sandra Fluke ever
appeared on the scene.

•Keep Lists to Intimidate
Sponsors:

Ominous lists are kept of sponsors
who have been bullied into giving up their First Amendment rights
-- and those who have stoutly resisted.

• Propagandize the Media:

The media is
quickly propagandized with a false story. In this case, Sandra
Fluke is portrayed as an innocent college girl when she is in fact
a 30-year old longtime left-wing activist.

• Social Media:

Use Twitter to play
Chinese Roulette.

•The White House and Media
Matters:

"Close coordination" with the White
House.

• The Media Matters $100,000 Secret Donor fund to
attack free speech:

A hundred grand bounty designed to
both end Rush's career -- and assault your God-given right to free
speech.

And one more thing.

What is it Angelo Carusone is quoted as doing in that 2010
Raw Story interview? A story that was in fact focused on
Glenn Beck?